by Gayle Greeno
“In other words, Parse, we go after Doyce and Jenret and the ghatti ourselves—without waiting for the Tribune’s decision.” The knowing, enigmatic glance she tossed at Parse made him all too aware of how much it mimicked the ghatti’s expressions and how slow the three of them made him feel sometimes. Sarrett finally took pity. “We know where they have to be headed, even if they don’t yet realize it themselves. The sooner we leave, the more chance we have of warning them. We’ll have to ride hard for the Research Hospice in the Tetonords. How long do you need to ready yourself?” Flourishing her papers in front of Parcellus’s still-red nose, she tapped it lightly, then brought the papers back and stuffed them in her waistband. “After all, you drew the map yourself.”
And so he had, although he hadn’t caught the implications as clearly as she had, the opportunity for action rather than the nail-biting frustration of enforced waiting. Oh, to be that quick and clever. Well, he could prove himself, too, could plan and organize. “The horses are well rested, the ghatti certainly are, though we aren’t. Adequate food and supplies are the main necessity.” He began to tick off items on his fingers, brow furrowed in concentration, determined to forget nothing. “Trail mix for the ghatti, oats, bread, cheese, dried meat, waterskins, brandy... ” Thinking hard, he gnawed at a thumbnail. “Can we winkle extra bandages and medications out of Twylla? More than we’d usually carry—I’d feel more secure.”
She nodded approval. “T’ss, go see what you can do about that without giving anything away.” The white ghatt with the startling black striping shot off on his errand.
Sitting now, scribbling a list, Parcellus strove to make his warning casual, “You know, we could be stripped of our tabards for this, for disobeying the Seeker General....”
“I know. So be it. We ride.”
“We ride,” he agreed, quirking the smallest of grins, hoping that it looked suitably knowing and feline. “Besides, Swan Maclough never said we couldn’t go. Perhaps she just never got around to actually telling us we could.”
“Hairsplitter!” She gave him a mock buffet. “I’ve no doubt you’re right. Just an oversight on her part, she’s had so much to concentrate on lately.” Grabbing a stack of clean handkerchiefs, she piled them high on the table. “And don’t forget these.”
Absentmindedly cramming them into pocket after pocket so that he bulged in unlikely places, Parse leaned back, dismayed. “What about Rolf and Chak?”
“Leave them a note—and hurry! They’re arguing so loudly again that I can hear them all the way up here, like a swarm of bees about to hive. Now’s the perfect time to leave.”
The folded note with its spiky, incisive script balanced against the lamp when Rolf hurried into the room, his whole body quivering with fatigue and barely checked anger. Yet another quibbling point to clarify.... Chak stopped, his tail lashed once, then was still.
“The’ve gone. I thought I felt someone drift by me before, but I wasn’t sure. Couldn’t afford the distraction of seeing if I could reach beyond the shielding the Seeker General’s got on.”
“Where have they gone?” Rolf ripped open the note with uncooperative fingers, tried to hold the sheet steady and distant enough so that his farsighted eyes could focus. The few sentences were enough to make him crumple the note, toss it with a fury he’d refused to let loose ’til now. “Oh, those blessed idiots! Couldn’t they have waited—they still don’t know the full implications of what they’ve discovered! Now we’ve got to convince the Tribune to save them as well!”
“In for a penny, in for a pound.” Chak cocked his head, dug behind his ear with a hind foot. “This should stir up things nicely for our side, don’t you think?”
“Perhaps.” He retrieved the tossed note, forced back his dizziness, and brushed the paper smooth against his thigh without thought. “If Dovina and Andwers don’t decide the Seeker General put them up to this. Come on, let’s go back. I suppose it’s too late to stop them, they’re outside the gates by now, aren’t they?”
“Most likely.” Best to be noncommittal, Chak decided, glad his Bondmate lacked the skill to read his mind. Let them have their head start, and would that he and Rolf were riding with them. And then he resounded with the cramping numbness snaking down Rolf’s left arm, the clenching pain in his Bondmate’s chest, and with every bit of strength within him let out a frantic mindscream for Mem’now, for Twylla to come running.
“There must be a shorter way, something more direct.” Harrap sounded aggrieved as he shifted his bulk in the saddle, plucking at an uncomfortable seam that chafed his inner thigh.
“There is. Unfortunately we’re not on it.” Mahafny’s tone stung, forbearance barely held in check.
Reining Lokka around, Doyce eased the mare between the two riders, hoping to avoid an argument. No one was in a good mood, herself included. Four more days of riding, four more days of unending, unbreaking dim forest, soaring black trunks barring the sky, branches cathedraling far above their heads. Monotonous food, adequate but never quite filling enough. The same with sleep. And mountainous inclines, barren single-file paths, and impossible downslopes that left the horses sliding, desperate for a firm footing. Shifting talus. If any Plumbs still survived, they ought to be here—and cursed herself for the thought, as if thinking it might make it come true. Plus one night of icy rain, a stinging drizzle close to freezing in needle-sharp spurs that bedeviled horses, riders, and ghatti like a cloud of biting, invisible gnats. And that was a bare accounting of physical discomfort; nothing had been said aloud of the malign force drawing them in its wake into the unknown.
“What Mahafny means is that ...” she placated, touching Harrap’s arm.
“Don’t assume what I mean. You’ve no right to make assumptions of that sort!” With a sour twist of her mouth, Mahafny scrutinized Doyce and she felt herself wilting under the glare. Mahafny continued. “We’re coming in through the back way, the back door, so to speak. There’s a good, serviceable road to the east of the Hospice, but we aren’t east of it. We’ve been moving from the west to the northeast, so we’ll arrive at the Hospice long before we arrive at the road. Assuming we get there. After all, it’s just a matter of a few mountains, a raging river or three, unsavory weather, wild animals lurking, and continual worry and fear over whether what we’re seeking rides ahead of us, behind us, around us, or has vanished into another country by now! Not impossible given that Marchmont’s border isn’t that far. Just a normal, run-of-the-mill day or oct or, Lady help us, octant or year for a Seeker. Aren’t you glad you’re a Seeker now, Harrap?”
Hunched forward on his horse, his once jaunty scarlet-faced jacket the worse for wear, damp and soiled, braiding unraveling, Harrap blew on his chapped hands, kept his eyes downcast. Jenret held the lead position, within earshot, but from the rigidity of his bearing, striving to ignore the squabble behind him.
“I think you omitted inadequate leadership.” Lamenting the impulse that had pushed her to the Shepherd’s side, Doyce spoke. Glutton for punishment, she reproached herself, but the words sprang out, floating in the air like a perfect target.
To her surprise, Mahafny did not take aim at the words. Instead, she thumped her tired horse with her heels and broke into a canter to overtake Jenret. Even then she didn’t stop, but drew past him to take the lead.
Harrap opened his mouth, and Doyce snapped, “Just don’t give me another of your platitudes, that the Lady’s will be done, or whatever. If you want to talk, fine. But spare me that.”
He started to speak again, stroked Parm and cocked his head, then tried once more. “It’s not that easy for any of us, but it’s been harder on her. She has no one to confess her thoughts and fears to, no one to give her consolation, to take her as she is.”
“I told you to leave religion out of it!”
“He isn’t speaking of religion,” Khar reproved her. “He’s speaking about us, our relationship.”
“Oh.” Reins slack, Lokka continued forward, Doyce sitting woodenly, col
or flooding her face. Hands twitching, she grasped the reins and managed to throw a meager apology in Harrap’s direction. “Sorry.”
“I know. You and Jenret tend to take it for granted. I almost take it for granted, but not quite yet.” Parm stretched on the pommel platform and rubbed against Harrap’s stomach until the Shepherd scratched his chin, lost for a moment in a silent conversation. “But the relationship we have with our ghatti is a source of comfort and release for the things you can’t or don’t dare say to your fellow travelers. The things she finally said to us. Not that she means them, but that she felt them, and they were poisoning her mind as badly as the snakebite poisoned her body. Think of the anxiety she feels that Evelien may be involved.”
They rode on, tired but in amiable silence for the moment. Finally Doyce asked, “So what now?”
Harrap considered. “So we enter by the back door.”
“Not that. What about Mahafny?”
“As I said, let her enter by the back door as well. Metaphorically speaking. She can’t come back and out-and-out apologize, or isn’t likely to. So let her do it her own way, let her enter by her own back door.” His eyes were wide and baby-blue, utterly without guile or meanness in them as he surveyed her, and Doyce felt chastened.
“Did anyone ever tell you that you’re a very wise man?”
He beamed, buffed a button against his sleeve. “The ghatti don’t pick fools, do they? And neither do the Shepherds, although they require a different wisdom than the rest of the world’s.”
“I’ll try to remember that.”
“Ah, but you’ll forget.” He wagged a finger at her. “But I’ll remind you every so often.”
Up ahead Jenret signaled a halt and called to Mahafny to stop and come round. They had descended the last boulder-strewn, overgrown trail winding down the final ridge and were back on level forest floor again. A small clearing here, not unlike others they had passed through before on their journey; not unlike the one where Mahafny had confronted the snake.
Without knowing why, Doyce sensed that this particular clearing was man-made, though she didn’t know what made her jump to that conclusion. She could see evidence of old fire around the perimeter, where it had radiated from the center burn spot. The dark ash color of the ground and the scarring of the bordering, twisted trees gave evidence of fire only, but whether set by man or nature’s lightning, she couldn’t judge. Perhaps a purposeful burn-off, perhaps not; too much time and a modicum of regenerative, healing growth had blurred distinctions, at least for her limited woodlore. Regardless of who created it, nature reclaimed it: spindly white pine shot upward around the boundaries, the first “youngsters” she had seen, obscuring the scarring which marred the bark of the parent trees, while a few hardwood saplings, oak from the look of the leathery brown leaves, and low, shaggy berry bushes, long past fruit-bearing, dotted the once clear center.
Mahafny lingered at the far side of the circle, dismounted but head bowed against her horse’s saddle, arms hanging limp and dejected. Then she turned, throwing back her head and shoulders, and walked past Jenret, tossing a noncommittal comment in his direction. Passing Saam, she bent without breaking stride and patted his head. The other ghatti stretched and twisted, smoothed ruffled fur, and made tentative, exploratory moves at whatever caught their interest.
The suddenness of the bird call cut through the random creaks and moans and whufflings of the horses and riders, so sharp and sweetly piercing as to make them all look skyward, craning their necks. Shielding her eyes against the brightness, Doyce cast about, waiting for the call to be repeated, but heard instead a whisper of sound slicing through the air with the deadly precision of scythes at harvest.
Out of nowhere, the shaft struck quivering, a hairbreadth from her foot, and the next arrow slammed Harrap full in the chest, sending him toppling, arms backstroking and a roar burgeoning from his throat.
“Gleaners!” Mahafny screamed as she rushed toward Harrap.
The air shivered with the soft, sussurating sound of arrows, arrows that seemed not to find their mark, unless their intent was to herd them all toward the center, away from the horses. Dodging this way and that, with no one within striking distance of sword or staff, indeed, no one even visible, Doyce fell back, always scanning the perimeter of the barbed circle. Jenret did likewise, one arm trailing a thin line of blood where he’d been pinked by an arrow, a touch too clever in his dodging and weaving. They stood back to back now, she could feel his body heat, with Harrap’s body and Mahafny’s kneeling form at their feet.
“Gleaners? Have they finally attacked us after all this time?” Doyce eyed her segment of the circle, intent on searching out one solid form, one person with whom to do battle.
“No.” Jenret’s tone held a certain admiration as he marked an arrow’s spent flight and carved it in two with his sword. “Not Gleaners. Gleaners hardly need to use arrows. Erakwa.” He bit back laughter, coughed to cover it. “I do hope they found the Gleaners before they found us.”
Plastering themselves flat, the ghatti worked their way outward like the four points of a compass, bellies tight to the ground, moving soft as a summer sunrise, so that one had to look twice to realize their progress. Once they reached the boundary of the trees and broke free, the Erakwa would have something to reckon with. Doyce mindspoke, calling out love and encouragement to Khar and wishing that Saam could comprehend as well. Then with rising guilt, she broadened her ’speaking to include Parm, now bereft of a second Bondmate.
The piebald ghatt paused long enough to give a jaunty twitch of his tail and respond. “He’s fine. I hope he gets me a Lady’s Shield after this is done!”
She sagged against Jenret for support. “Did you hear Parm?”
“Did I hear him? Who couldn’t? Any Seeker within a two-league radius could read him loud and clear. Mahafny, what’s the prognosis on your patient?”
Pulling Harrap’s jacket back across his broad chest, Mahafny struggled with the buttons and risked a glance up. “Incredibly lucky, but with an honorably ugly and painful contusion underneath his medallion. Fit to die with the rest of us at any time now.”
Harrap’s chuckle rumbled low, his voice strained. “With a bedside manner like that, I’m bound to improve. What can you spare me in the way of weapons? I’ve the Lady-blessed right to protect myself but not to take life.”
Jenret’s answer was short and to the point. “Clods of earth. Stones. My staff. Beyond that, your bare fists will have to do.”
Scrabbling at the dirt, Mahafny had already gathered a pile of pebbles, each about the size of her thumb. “You’re sure it’s Erakwa? But why? They’ve always been peaceable from everything I’ve ever heard. They tend to back off and disappear if confronted, not fight.”
“Well, Gleaners wouldn’t need arrows, not with their special talent, so it’s likely to be Erakwa. Besides, the fletching doesn’t resemble any I’ve ever seen hunters use. We’re on Erakwa land and have been for days, the trail we’re following leads right through. But I haven’t a clue why—you’re right, they’re gentle folk. They don’t believe in the concept of ‘owning’ land, not as we do, so we can’t be trespassing.” Without taking his eyes from the forest, Jenret handed Harrap his staff as he continued to mark the flight of the few random arrows which still came their way.
When the whistle sounded again, Doyce felt herself transfixed anew by its clear, liquid beauty, but with an added menace twisting in her stomach. What did it signal ? She remembered the Erakwan in the Market Square cupping his hands around his whistle, lofting that one clear note to the sky. What happened now? She watched the ghatti freeze at the sound, then resume their soundless creep. The arrows had stopped. Whether they had run out or the whistle had commanded them to cease, she didn’t know, but the field of shafts, some red, some black, their fletching glistening, swayed like some exotic field of grain ripe for the mowing. That no one had been seriously hurt seemed a miracle, even without the sounds of Harrap’s muttered thanksg
iving in her ears.
The whistle sounded, this time on a descending, rather than an ascending note, and now she could discern faces within the forest around her. A shadowed profile here, a glint of eyes there, a glimpse of coppery shoulder further over, then nothingness, the forest seemingly empty of human habitation.
Upright, his weight on the staff, Harrap balanced beside her and Jenret, the three forming a defensive triangle. Mahafny stayed crouched, her pile of pebbles at the ready.
“How good are you these days?” Jenret asked the eumedico as he transferred his sword to his left hand so he could explore his wound with the other.
“From here to halfway to the trees, extremely accurate. But that brings them a little too close for comfort.” Mahafny fumbled at a pouch tied to her belt, brought out a rawhide thong with a leather patch at its center. “Of course, with my sling, the distances doubles or triples, and without any great loss in accuracy.”
“Don’t tell me you still carry that?” Unable to stop herself, Doyce laughed out loud, letting herself slip back to more carefree times when she’d watched Mahafny knock pine cones from trees with her sling. “And believe me, she can hit anything she chooses.”
“I know.” Jenret’s shoulder brushed hers, the touch a comfort, solid and real. “She taught me on a visit one summer.”
All the time they’d been talking, Doyce had kept her mindspeech open and receptive, awaiting word from the ghatti. Jenret and Harrap did the same, she knew. Other than murmured thoughts of caution as the ghatti slipped outward, she had heard little of moment. They seemed as perplexed as the Seekers as to how the Erakwa had crept so close without the great cats noticing. Rawn sounded especially grumbly and put out by it, as if his professionalism had been found wanting. Parm, as usual, viewed the whole thing as a delicious lark, but Khar remained silent, a puzzling development to Doyce’s way of thinking.
From this distance Khar’s stripes and whorls of black and tan and gray blended into the drying grasses and near-leafless bushes.